Risk Free Assessment
The Situation
VinoShipper, located in Windsor, California, empowers wineries to grow their direct sales and to provide consumers with a greater selection of wine. They recently recognized that their shopping cart and sign up form templates were not developed in accordance with accessibility guidelines. Additionally, many of their clients, wineries in California, are feeling increasing legal pressure to be fully compliant. The company’s leadership team realized that by fixing accessibility issues they could ensure that their platform would not be the cause of legal repercussions for their clients. Motivated to obtain the distinction of being a fully compliant platform and their commitment to diversity and inclusivity, they engaged the William L. Hudson Workforce Innovation Center’s LCI Tech team to audit their website.
Our Approach
After a high-level overview of the site and workflows for shopping cart, shipping and membership, the LCI team employed a series of manual and automated techniques to pinpoint the accessibility gaps. Through manual testing, and the utilization of screen magnifiers and JAWS screen reader technology the team determined four main areas of concern:
- Color contrast – High contrast is helpful to low-vision users to read text and see images
- Missing labels for form fields – Proper labeling allows a screen reader user to identify the control field
- Keyboard traps – Cause the user to get stuck on an element of the page
- Slideshow carousel with no way to pause or stop the swapping in and out of the pictures.
The Result
The audit highlighted non-compliance based on WCAG 2.0 standards at Level A or Level AA with 8 out of 41 standards in a detailed Excel report. Client has gained foundational knowledge in Digital Accessibility and can confidently claim that their platform is fully compliant.